Bikes Blues and BBQ - traffic laws for lesser folk?

Along with the October event will come the inevitable arguments over whether it is harming certain downtown businesses. Also, the Fayetteville City Council will be considering a change to the noise ordinance that would prohibit "excessive" engine revving. Of course, this would apply to everyone, all year round, and not just the revelers at Bikes Blues and BBQ.

What are you gonna do? Make a citizen's arrest, hold onto someone and hope a cop shows up to write a ticket? By the time the cops show up, the offending noise maker will be long gone.

People do complain about the noise, though - a lot. And from as far away as the NWA mall, as well.

I think you have to expect the noise - no matter how loud it is - from an event like this. Plus, it puts needed tax dollars in the city's coffers.

But there is something else that bothers people, and no one seems to do anything about it.

Some of our biker friends seem to feel that traffic signals are for less highly evolved creatures, and that they are not governed by those laws themselves.

Many is the happy traveler who has seen motorcycle "enthusiasts" zoom right on through red lights on Fayetteville city streets - sometimes with police cars on the scene.

Some highway users are more equal than others?

******

I am in Seventh Heaven; I sold a few more books last month. Not a few hundred, or thousand, as I might like, but a few.

Ah - the life of a self-published writer.

I am making the round of agents again, though it gets sort of depressing. I have my science fiction novel, which I refer to as my "slow-moving cult classic." and my history of Fayetteville/Washington County between 1990-2002. Trying to make money aside, the reason I wrote "Ozark Mosaic" was that everytime I try to look up Fayetteville history in the library, it seems to drop off sometime after the first world war. Often you get books of photographs, but I want to read about the people and events that took place locally. And since the last 15 years or so has been retty exciting, I just collected a lot of my writings from Grapevine and the Ozark Gazette into a book.

I have tried to interest the UA Press in "Ozark Mosaic," but no joy.

By no joy, I mean not even a rejection letter. I have tried to pique their interest three times now - the last time I even sent along a copy of the book.

I've given up on that particular route - but it doesn't stop me from rolling my eyes every time I read that they answer everybody who approaches them with a book proposal.

Yeah, right.

So I make the round of agents and content myself with selling a copy here, a copy there. It's not so bad.